Chapter Text
Vanessa Herleins had learned a long time ago that there were three kinds of parties.
There were parties people wanted to attend. Those had music loud enough to make the walls breathe, food people actually remembered to eat, and at least one person making decisions so bad that everyone else would still be talking about it next month.
There were parties people had to attend. Those were work things, family things, awkward things with folding chairs and paper plates where everyone pretended not to check the time.
And then there were parties she attended because her younger sister looked at her with big hopeful eyes and said, Please? It'll be fun. I promise.
Toby Tripp's birthday party belonged firmly in the third category.
Vanessa stood just inside the Tripp house, one shoulder against the wall, holding a paper cup full of soda that had gone flat ten minutes ago. Across the room, Jessica was laughing at something Lucas said. It was not her real laugh. Vanessa knew the difference. Jessica's real laugh was ugly in the way all real laughs were ugly—too loud, too sudden, impossible to perform on command. This one was polished. Pretty. The kind of laugh Jessica used when she wanted people to think everything was fine.
Vanessa knew that laugh because she had been hearing versions of it for years. Jessica used it when Mom forgot a school meeting and Jessica pretended it was fine. When Dad promised he would be home by dinner and arrived after dessert. Their parents loved them. Vanessa believed that. But love did not always arrive on time, and somewhere along the way Vanessa had become the person who did.
Vanessa narrowed her eyes.
Something was off.
Three years of event security had taught Vanessa that people were terrible at hiding emergencies. They smiled too quickly, looked at exits too often, and touched whatever object they were trying not to think about. Toby's little group was doing all three.
It was not one thing. It was all the small things stacked on top of each other.
Toby had opened his presents too quickly. Nick kept looking toward the hallway like he expected a fire alarm to start screaming. Lucas, who seemed like the sort of boy who would apologize to a plant before stepping on it, was tapping his fingers against his knee with enough nervous energy to power a small lamp. And Jessica—Jessica kept touching the bracelet on her wrist.
Not adjusting it. Not admiring it.
Checking it.
Vanessa took a sip of flat soda and made a face.
"Having fun?" Jessica asked, appearing beside her suddenly.
Vanessa lowered the cup. "Define fun."
Jessica rolled her eyes. "You said you'd try."
"I am trying. Look at me. Standing here. Not leaving. Heroic effort."
"You could talk to people."
"I talked to your friend Nick."
"You asked him why he looked like he was waiting for a bomb to go off."
"He did."
Jessica opened her mouth, then closed it. Her eyes flicked toward the hallway again.
There it was.
Vanessa did not move. "Jess."
"What?"
"What's in the hallway?"
"Bathroom."
"Try again."
Jessica blinked too fast. "Closet?"
"Why did that sound like a confession?"
"It didn't."
"It absolutely did."
Jessica huffed and looked away. She was sixteen and had recently decided that looking away counted as winning an argument. Vanessa remembered being sixteen. She had also been stupid at sixteen.
"Vanessa, please don't start."
"I haven't started anything."
"You're doing the thing."
"What thing?"
"The older sister thing."
Vanessa placed a hand against her chest. "The protective, wise, tragically underappreciated thing?"
"The suspicious thing."
"That's because you're acting suspicious."
Jessica's eyes dropped to Vanessa's wrist.
"You're wearing that?"
Vanessa lifted the silver-blue bracelet. "You left it on the counter."
"It's not—" Jessica stopped too quickly. "It's old."
"Then you won't miss it."
Jessica looked like she very much would.
Her expression sharpened. Not anger. Fear. It was there for half a second, quick as a hand passing over a candle flame, but Vanessa saw it.
Before she could ask, Toby clapped his hands from the middle of the living room.
"Cake!" he announced, as if he had personally invented the concept.
Everyone turned toward him. Jessica immediately used the distraction to slip away.
Vanessa watched her go.
Toby Tripp was standing near the table, grinning so hard it looked painful. He was younger than Vanessa by enough years that his energy alone made her tired. He had messy hair, bright eyes, and the particular confidence of someone who believed improvising counted as planning.
Nick stood beside him, arms folded, trying very hard to look like the responsible one. It almost worked. Lucas hovered near the edge of the group with a plate in his hand. Jessica moved to stand beside them.
The four of them looked at each other.
Not like friends sharing a joke.
Like people waiting for a signal.
Vanessa's fingers tightened around her cup.
"Happy birthday to you," Lucas began.
The singing was terrible.
Vanessa appreciated that. There was something honest about bad singing. Toby seemed delighted by every off-key second of it. He leaned forward, ready to blow out the candles, when a sound cut through the room.
It was faint.
Almost nothing.
A strange, sharp chirp from somewhere down the hall.
Vanessa heard it because she was watching for it. Most of the others did not. Toby did. Nick did. Lucas did. Jessica definitely did.
The four froze.
Then Toby blew out the candles too fast.
"Be right back!" he said.
Nick grabbed his arm. "Toby."
"What? We have to—"
Nick's eyes darted toward Vanessa, then the other guests.
Toby corrected himself with all the grace of a falling shelf. "We have to get more plates."
"There are plates right there," Vanessa said.
Everyone looked at her.
She lifted her cup slightly. "Just being helpful."
Toby's grin twitched. "Other plates."
"Special plates," Lucas added.
Vanessa looked at him. "Special plates."
Lucas swallowed. "For cake."
"Cake plates."
"Yes."
Jessica stepped forward. "We'll be quick."
Vanessa's gaze moved from Jessica to the hallway and back again. "All four of you?"
"It's a lot of plates," Toby said.
Nick closed his eyes for a moment, like he was praying for patience.
Vanessa smiled without warmth. "Right."
Jessica gave her a look that said please do not make this worse. Then she and the three boys hurried out of the living room.
Vanessa waited.
The party tried to continue around the absence. Someone cut the cake badly. Someone else found plastic forks. A younger kid started poking at the frosting flowers. Toby's mother called from another room, asking if everything was okay, and one of the guests yelled back that it was.
Vanessa did not move from the wall.
One minute passed.
Then two.
Then five.
No one returned with special cake plates.
Vanessa placed her untouched cake down on a side table.
She told herself to let it go.
Jessica had secrets. Teenagers had secrets. Vanessa had been a teenager once, despite what Jessica seemed to believe. Maybe they were planning something dumb for Toby's birthday. Maybe there was a surprise hidden in the hallway. Maybe Toby had gotten sick from eating frosting before the party and everyone had rushed off to help him in the least convincing way possible.
Maybe.
The chirp came again.
This time it sounded almost like a voice, but too distorted to be human.
Vanessa pushed away from the wall.
"Bathroom?" one of the guests asked as she passed.
"Something like that."
The hallway was narrow and quieter than the living room. Family photos lined one side. Toby and Nick as children. Toby with chocolate on his face. Nick holding some kind of science trophy. The pictures made everything feel normal in a way that only made the wrongness sharper.
Her phone buzzed once in her pocket. Mom, probably asking whether Jessica had eaten anything besides frosting. Vanessa ignored it. She would answer after she found out why her sister had vanished into Toby Tripp's hallway.
Vanessa reached the bathroom first.
Empty.
Then a bedroom.
Empty.
Another room.
Empty.
At the end of the hall was a closet door.
It looked completely ordinary.
That was the problem.
Vanessa stared at it.
Behind her, the party noise continued, muffled by walls and distance. Laughter. Plates. Someone complaining that Toby had disappeared before opening one of the cards.
She placed her hand on the closet knob.
Cold metal.
She turned it.
Inside were coats, a vacuum cleaner, a box of old shoes, and a smell like dust and detergent.
No Jessica.
No Toby.
No Nick.
No Lucas.
Vanessa pushed the coats aside.
The back wall looked normal.
She knocked on it.
Solid.
"Okay," she muttered. "Great. I'm insane."
She almost closed the door.
Then the bracelet she had borrowed from Jessica that morning slipped down her wrist.
It was not really a bracelet. Just the silver-blue thing from Jessica's counter, the one Jessica had looked far too nervous about. Vanessa had put it on to annoy her.
Now it warmed against her skin.
Vanessa looked down.
A thin blue light pulsed beneath the metal.
She went very still.
The closet wall answered.
A line of light appeared down the center of the back panel. Then another. Shapes unfolded where there had been no seams a second earlier. Vanessa took one step back, but the space inside the closet stretched impossibly deep, swallowing the coats, the shelves, the shoes, everything ordinary.
The wall opened.
Vanessa stared.
On the other side was not a closet.
It was a room.
No, not a room. A chamber. A hidden space with curved walls and strange glowing panels. The air smelled faintly like stone after rain. Crystals or machines—she could not tell which—rose from the floor in uneven clusters. Symbols flickered across surfaces that looked too smooth to be old and too organic to be technology.
In the center of it all was a circular platform.
Above the platform, the air twisted.
Blue-green light folded over itself like water trying to become glass.
Vanessa did not step forward.
Her body did it anyway.
One step.
Then another.
"What the hell," she whispered.
The chamber hummed.
The bracelet burned hotter.
Vanessa grabbed at it with her other hand, trying to pull it off, but it clung to her skin. Not painfully, not exactly, but with a pressure that made the bones in her wrist ache.
A voice crackled from somewhere nearby.
"—Lords detected—unstable—wait, no, that is not—"
Vanessa spun. "Who's there?"
No answer.
Just a small screen flickering on a panel to her right. For half a second, she thought she saw eyes. Not human eyes. Bright, intelligent, alarmed.
Then the portal brightened.
Vanessa backed toward the closet door.
"Jessica?" she called.
Her voice sounded too small in the chamber.
The portal pulsed.
The bracelet flashed.
A symbol appeared in the air above the platform—curving lines like wind caught in a spiral.
Vanessa did not know what it meant, but some part of her recognized the shape from Jessica's bracelet. From the glances. From the way the four of them had vanished without a trace.
Jessica had been lying.
Not about a boyfriend.
Not about sneaking out.
Not about school.
Something much worse.
The humming rose.
Vanessa turned to run.
The platform pulled.
It did not grab her like hands. It took the air from around her, stole the balance from under her feet, and dragged her backward before she could scream. Her shoulder hit the edge of the platform. Pain burst white-hot down her arm. She clawed at the floor, nails scraping uselessly over smooth stone.
"Help!"
The living room was too far away.
The party was too loud.
The portal opened like an eye.
Vanessa saw green sky.
Red stone.
A flash of something moving.
Then the world folded around her and the Tripp house disappeared.
For one breath, she was nowhere.
There was no up. No down. No floor. No air. Light tore past in ribbons. Her stomach twisted as if her body had been turned inside out and shoved through a keyhole. She tried to scream, but there was nothing to scream with.
Then gravity remembered her.
Vanessa hit the ground hard.
All the air left her lungs.
For several seconds, she could not move. She lay curled on her side, fingers digging into rough dirt, her mouth open around a sound that would not come. Heat pressed against her skin. Not summer heat. Furnace heat. The kind that breathed from below.
When she finally dragged air into her chest, it tasted like ash.
She opened her eyes.
The first thing she saw was a sky the wrong color.
Not blue.
Not gray.
Greenish, bruised, streaked with smoke.
The second thing she saw was a mountain bleeding fire.
Vanessa pushed herself up too fast and almost vomited.
She was on a slope of dark rock and red dust. Far below, rivers of glowing orange cut through the land. Above them rose jagged towers, black and sharp as broken teeth. The air shimmered. The ground trembled. Somewhere far away, something roared.
Vanessa stared.
Her brain tried, very politely, to stop working.
"No," she said.
The word vanished into the hot wind.
She turned in a slow circle.
No house.
No closet.
No party.
No Jessica.
The portal was gone.
Vanessa took one step backward.
A small rock shifted under her shoe and tumbled down the slope, bouncing once, twice, then disappearing into a crack glowing red from within.
She froze.
Her hands shook.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay, Vanessa. Think."
That was what people said when panic was about to eat them alive. Think. As if thought could build a bridge back home. As if thought could explain away impossible skies and volcanoes that looked like they were watching her.
She checked herself automatically.
Arms: bruised, scraped, moving.
Shoulder: hurt, but not broken.
Head: pounding.
Phone: in her pocket.
She pulled it out.
No signal.
Of course.
She almost laughed. It came out as a broken little breath.
"No signal in hell. Great."
A sound scraped behind her.
Vanessa turned.
At first, she thought it was a person in armor.
Then it moved.
It was too large. Too jagged. Its body looked carved from volcanic stone, with cracks of molten light glowing between plates of black rock. Horns curved from its head. Its eyes burned orange. One hand held a weapon that looked less forged than grown from lava itself.
Another shape climbed over the ridge behind it.
Then another.
Vanessa stopped breathing.
The first creature tilted its head.
It spoke in a voice like rocks grinding together.
"Air Lord."
Vanessa did not understand the words for a second. Her mind refused to attach meaning to them.
Then the creature stepped closer.
"Take her."
That she understood.
Vanessa ran.
She did not think. She did not choose a direction. She turned away from the burning-eyed things and ran across the slope, shoes slipping on dust and loose stones. Heat slammed against her face. Her lungs burned. Behind her, the creatures shouted.
Something crashed into the ground where she had been a second earlier.
Rock exploded against her calf.
Vanessa stumbled but kept going.
The slope dipped, then rose. She scrambled over a ridge on all fours, palms tearing open on sharp stone. The land beyond was worse: narrow paths between steaming cracks, black boulders, dead twisted trees that looked like they had burned but never fallen.
She heard them behind her.
Heavy feet.
Grinding stone.
Metal scraping.
They were not fast in the way animals were fast. They were relentless. Every step shook the ground.
"Stop!" one roared.
Vanessa nearly choked on a laugh.
"Sure!" she gasped. "Great idea!"
A bolt of fire struck a dead tree ahead of her.
It burst apart.
Vanessa screamed and threw herself sideways. Burning splinters rained across the path. One caught her sleeve. She slapped it out without slowing.
Her thoughts came in useless fragments.
Jessica.
Closet.
Birthday.
Portal.
Run.
She reached a narrow ledge along the side of a hill. On her left, the ground rose steeply. On her right, it dropped into a ravine full of smoke. The path curved ahead, disappearing behind black stone.
Vanessa's breath came ragged.
Her legs hurt.
Her chest hurt.
She was not built for this. She was not some movie heroine who could sprint forever while monsters chased her through another world. She was twenty-three, undertrained compared to what she used to be, and had eaten half a slice of cold pizza before coming to the party because Jessica had said there would be snacks.
There were not enough snacks in the world for this.
A shadow fell over her.
Vanessa looked back.
One of the creatures had climbed above the path. It crouched on the slope like a gargoyle, molten eyes fixed on her.
It jumped.
Vanessa ducked.
The creature landed in front of her, cracking the ledge. She skidded to a stop so fast her knees almost buckled.
Behind her, the others closed in.
The creature raised its weapon.
"Alive," it growled.
Vanessa backed away.
The ledge crumbled under her heel.
A pebble fell.
Then another.
She looked down.
The ravine breathed smoke.
The monsters advanced.
Vanessa's hand found a loose stone near the wall. She grabbed it and held it up like it mattered.
"Stay back."
The creature in front made a sound that might have been laughter.
Vanessa's grip tightened until the sharp edge cut her palm.
"I said stay back!"
It reached for her.
Vanessa threw the stone at its face.
The stone bounced off with a pathetic crack.
The creature did not even blink.
For one impossible second, everyone froze.
Then the ledge gave way.
Vanessa's right foot dropped into empty air.
Her stomach lurched.
She grabbed for the wall. Her fingers scraped over rock. Found nothing. Her left knee slammed into the edge. Pain shot up her leg. She heard herself make a sound—small, shocked, almost offended.
Then she fell.
The first impact stole the world.
Her shoulder hit stone. She rolled. Her back struck something hard. The sky spun green-red-black. She tried to curl in on herself, tried to protect her head the way an old workplace safety instructor had drilled into her years ago, but there was no time...
She hit again.
And again.
A crack like breaking wood filled her ears.
Maybe it was a branch.
Maybe it was bone.
She tumbled down the slope, dust and blood in her mouth, the burning world flipping over and over until she no longer knew which direction falling was.
Then her head struck something solid.
Everything stopped.
There was no dramatic thought.
No final word.
No image of Jessica.
Just a bright white flash.
Then nothing.
The Lava Gormiti reached the bottom of the slope long after the human stopped moving.
For a while, none of them approached.
She lay twisted against a slab of black rock, one arm bent beneath her, hair spilled across the dust. Blood darkened the stone beneath her head. Her chest did not seem to rise.
One of the creatures stepped closer and nudged her with the end of its weapon.
No response.
"Dead?" another asked.
The first leaned down.
Heat shimmered around its stone face.
A faint pulse of blue light flickered beneath Vanessa's skin.
Once.
Then again.
The creature drew back.
"Not dead."
The others muttered uneasily.
From far above, the green sky groaned with thunder.
The first creature reached down and lifted Vanessa by the back of her jacket as if she weighed nothing.
Her head lolled forward.
Blood ran down her temple and dripped into the dust.
"Take her to Lord Obscurio," it said.
The name moved through the air like smoke over a grave.
The creatures turned toward the volcanic fortress in the distance.
Behind them, the ravine swallowed the last echo of Vanessa's fall.
Back in the Tripp house, the party continued for another seven minutes before anyone noticed Vanessa Herleins was gone.